“Fuck,” Eve said, in a tiny, terrified voice, and collapsed on the malevolently hard bed, which was all they had to sit on. “Oh fuck, oh fuck. Why not? What happened?”
“Baynes tried to kill me, that’s what! The man is a raving bedlamite!”
“Shit. Are you all right?”
“No, I am not!” Nico said, with the force of relived fear. “He drew a pistol on me, point-blank. I made placating noises, then stabbed him in the hand and ran like hell. He followed me to the inn with a couple of men, I had to climb out a fucking window to get to the stables, and as I was riding away, the bastard shot at me!”
Eve gave him a quick survey. “He missed, right?”
“That isn’t the point! Yes, he missed. I’m not hurt. Not happy, but not hurt.”
“Good.” Eve paused. “You might have seen it coming.”
“Oh, piss off.”
“Just saying, I warned you.”
Eve had indeed warned him, and Nico had waved it away. “Well, I didn’t think he’d attackme. Not an aristo. What’s the point of England if people go around murdering nobility? I could have stayed in France for that.”
“You probably should have,” Eve said. “Because— Oh, hell. Thing is, Nic, while you were away—”
“Miss Whitecross.”
“You’ve heard.”
“Yes, I’ve heard!” Nico yelped. “What the buggery? She’s married? She’sdead?”
“It happened the day after you left. She fell down the stairs.”
“Wait. Fell? Was she not—you know?”
Eve executed a very familiar eye-roll. “Poisoned? No, she wasn’t. She fell and busted her hip. There was plenty of fuss about why she fell, but it was ruled an accident.”
Nico frowned. “Why are people saying the other, then? What about this druggist?”
“The man she married? He isn’t a druggist, he’s an oil and colourman—makes paints—and the fall was nothing to do with him. She married him on her deathbed to cut Laxton out. Did it properly, everything was witnessed, and she even got a will done. She’s dead, he’s rich, Laxton’s disinherited, and we’re fucked.”
“So fucked,” Nico said. “She was a good old soul in her way, and I’m glad she could spite Laxton, but we’refucked.”
“What are we going to do?”
That was very much the question. When Nico had left ten days ago, they were about to get five thousand pounds from Chilcott Baynes, with Miss Whitecross’s fortune to come on top, and everything was going to be wonderful. Now they had,if he calculated their assets and rounded up to the nearest pound, sweet fuck all in hand, no visible means of support, and a debt to London’s nastiest moneylender that was ticking up every day.
“Damn,” he said, considerably understating the matter. “Has Gaskin sent anyone round?”
“One of his men. Wanted to know where you’d gone.” Eve swallowed. “I told him we’d have the money by Friday.”
“Shit.All right, let’s not panic.”
“Why not? It’s all gone wrong!”
That was inarguable. “Why don’t we clear out? Cut stick out of London, of England. To hell with Baynes. Forget the whole thing. We write it off and run for France, and Jacky Gaskin can whistle for his money.”
“That’s not what he does,” Eve said. “What he does for his money is send people after you who break your knees and ankles first so you can’t get away, and then your hands, only they do those slower, and then oncethat’sdone, he tells you how you’re going to earn his money back for him, and that part’s even worse. He doesn’t like people who don’t pay their debts.”
Then why did you borrow money from him?Nico wanted to scream, but it wouldn’t help. Eve had had a good plan—daring, ingenious, only slightly insane—which had foundered on the rocks of Chilcott Baynes being a murderous swine. Recriminations would get them nowhere.
Eve appeared to be thinking. Nico knew and feared the signs. “You still have the painting, yes? All right, suppose we go back to Baynes—”